


My Mind is Wandering. Straying

by Anonymous



Category: Homestuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-18
Updated: 2021-01-18
Packaged: 2021-03-16 15:09:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28833204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Kudos: 5
Collections: Anonymous





	My Mind is Wandering. Straying

Dirk surfed in the emptiness of the incisphere with only the company of a rocketboard held together only by the fraying seams of whatever alchemical wonder was performed on it. His wanderings were aimless, and perhaps aimlessness was the aim. Thoughts dissipated easily when one was flying past billowing clouds of star material and copper green metal frozen static in space’s vacuum close to the void where light and time slowed down. Dirk thoughts and worries about New Earth and its resident gods too faded into nothingness as he drifted. The incisphere, as Dirk knew, held secrets that the collective knowledge of all its residents could not know. That was why it was such an effective distraction. 

Breath was an aspect of direction, wind, air, potentially influence, but most significantly to Dirk, an aspect of freedom. Drifting was freedom. Freedom from the ever-growing megacorporation under Jane. Freedom from the glimpses of something more clawing at his mind. Freedom from juggling his life and the people in it. 

Dirk touched down on a windy planet.

However, while his percentage bar beside his map of the incisphere began to be completed, so did his liberation from Earth. Soon, he would have no use wandering. Soon he’d know everything there was to know about their world. Soon, he would be back in an empty apartment, not knowing what to do with his mind or those around him. 

He breathed in deeply. It smelled like petrichor and earth.

Dirk didn’t know why he kept coming back to LOWAS. Why his steps always led back here unconsciously. In his solace, he followed the breeze here and walked with it instead of the one who was loved by the winds. This planet breathed of freedom, and only it did. 

Dirk followed the path he landed on. He wasn’t sure if he had walked it before, but he didn’t care.

Every single time he came, he became sick of freedom eventually. Revolted by the emptiness. Disgusted by blue. He would go back then. Go back to a world where the few who bothered to talk to him would politely ignore the days he spent gone with no notice.

He passed through a canyon with its layers of different blues. The rainy season if there were any would fill this place with rushing water.

Standing behind a greek column at one of Jane’s snobbish business parties, he fixed the uncomfortably stiff sleeves of his tuxedo. Fiddling with his cufflinks while trying to avoid everyone else and everything else. 

He managed to for an hour before a light, but slightly hoarse voice said, “You . . . have an air around you. It smells like . . . the cloud-clearing winds of LOWAS?” Dirk looked up.

Dirk lingered on a plateau. It was large and bereft of everything except wind.

It was John who was staring at Dirk with an uncanny light in his eyes. Dirk hadn’t expected to see him at a party or anywhere really. He rolled with it. Greetings, small talk, but John became uncomfortable in the end and left hastily. 

Dirk surfed through the incisphere on a rickety board which could barely be called a rocketboard. The seams of alchemy were fraying and the original fire extinguisher and rad skateboard were showing through in the form of wood cracks strewn across the board that was spewing foam out one side and highly flammable gases through the others. His wanderings were aimless, and perhaps aimlessness was the aim. It was easy to forget about New Earth when one was flying past a surreal cloud of broken Statues of Liberty in their copper green glory or witnessing the sleeping form of a thousand-year old Turtles residing in a volcano. The incisphere always held secrets to discover, and as Dirk’s map began to be completed, so did his liberation from Earth near its end. It was with this in mind that he descended upon a planet wind and shade.

Breath was an aspect of direction, wind, air, influence, and most importantly to Dirk, freedom. John Egbert, Heir of Breath, was the deity of this planet and should’ve been guarding here. Instead, like most of the gods including Dirk himself, John never frequented the planet nor did he care for it. In Dirk’s solace he had wandered into the land’s hold following the breeze. This planet was freedom. No one, nothing, no place cared enough to look for Dirk here and he was in utter solace save the occasional salamander. He wandered the hallow canyons and the plateaus of high where rain sometimes came in sheets before dispersing in a moment’s time. And once he felt sick of himself and the solitude, he’d head back and everyone would just agree unsaid that Dirk went raving with some mortals that weekend.

So that was why Dirk had stared at John behind the black windows of his shades when John had mentioned with a wave of his hand that Dirk smelt “of petrichor and the cloud-clearing winds of LOWAS” before asking Dirk if SBAHJ and Ghostbusters on the same screen should be illegal because “Ghostbusters don’t deserve Dave’s satirical stabs at Obama II” and drifting away on blue cloud. And Dirk just stared into the marine blue as he pondered. Did John care? Did he remember LOWAS, his immortality? And next thing he had known was drifting through the vacuum of nothingness until he was back on the cool rocks and damp mosses of the planet of winds and shades. 

How does one smell the difference between cloud-clearing winds and normal winds? Dirk had never once heard or been guided through LOWAS since its mystery was what kept Dirk here. It’s hidden scent, the fact that Dirk knew as much of it as he knew of why schools age so horribly was why he stayed. If he had known he’d have left, but now that the damned question hounded his mind so approached a salamander with its huge, slimy bubble that burst onto Dirk as he began to talk. He could feel the film of moist saliva settle over his face, and lips, and his tongue. Why did he decide to talk to these insults to Hygiene? Fighting off the itch in his hands to go wash his eyes, and ears, and nose, and just plain dunk himself in an icy river, he asked for its guidance. The beast refused. If Dirk weren’t a calmer being, he would’ve stabbed the being with a nice and handy knife, but Dirk was a calmer being so he did not. Instead Dirk smiled and pushed his drooping hair out of his face and told the salamander to kindly fuck off before he decided to explore on his own.

Dirk had after wandering in what felt like loops of glowing shrooms been prepared to drop dead. The De-AI-ed HAL told him he had not, in fact, been wandering aimlessly, but had rather (tres)passed an entire acre worth of community-owned salamander farms for glowing loopy shrooms. Half-dead on the ground, Dirk had stared through the black shades at the ethereal blue glow in front of him. He wondered what revenge tasted like. Dared he? He remembered the Salamander. He dared. Popping one in his mouth, his teeth crunched revolutionary-socialist fruition of the Salamanders. He salivated each taste as he rolled the gills and stalk and bits of blue dirt around on his mouth, and thought it faintly reminiscent of magic shrooms. How did Dirk know? He may have started a shroom-farm in his closet or something of the likes. He may have fed them to seagulls before. He may have eaten one or two if he were bored enough. Dirk may have done a lot of things like getting high on LOWAS because his legs were dead and was dripping with slime all credit to John.

Then he found himself at John’s house. It towered above the rest of the land, a looming reminder of the game. Dirk found the stairs, once pristine, but now crumbling. Partially overgrown with all sorts of caps. He began ascending the steps. Every so often, he would peer through the window or step into a room. They were all empty. Dirk always believed that after completing a speedrun, players should take the time to flesh out the game. Perhaps Earth C was how other people did. People like Roxy who deep down inside of her love people and company even though she tended to blame her problems on others. She would have a blast reconstructing these moonscrapers into cities, or maybe fortresses. He would. But that was a 200 year late dream. The houses were crumbling. They were ancient ruins used by rites of passages by the new generations. There were corpses. Dirk continued walking.

He didn’t know what he’d find at the top. It was John’s original home. Well-kept. Unreachable. A preserved memory untouched. Dirk could almost see the classic suburban family -1 mom. Jane would hate this place. Dirk supposed that even the blandest of them all, John, who he didn’t really know at all, would have a place like this. He supposed the next thing he’ll find is a lot of places like this that give a deep delve into the psyche of John, a deep delve Dirk did not want.

They had reached their goal, hooray. What was his purpose now?


End file.
